Oak Chapel United Methodist Church

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"These are those who come from the great tribulation," whispers the elder in John's dream, as they stand before the throne of God, "…they've washed their robes, scrubbed them clean in the blood of the Lamb." The New Testament, and especially the Book of Revelation, was written against the background of persecution. The "great tribulation" had arrived. You could no longer be a Christian for free. St. John the Divine, author of Revelation, was Bishop of the seven Christian churches in Turkey. (Turkey is called "Asia Minor" in the Bible.) In punishment for his faith, the Roman officials had exiled John on the barren island of Patmos, and from there he wrote his clandestine book to comfort his people back home, who also were suffering for their faith. The message of Revelation is, "Keep the faith. Terrible things are going to happen. We will suffer. The natural world will be turned inside out with cosmic, cataclysmic events. You will see things you've never seen before, things that will knock your socks off. But don't be afraid. It's all part of God's final struggle with Satan, which God is sure to win. Whatever you do, don't quit. If you hang in there, you will be among those "dressed in white robes (symbolizing purity) and waving palm branches (symbolizing victory), and singing before the Throne of God." "…no more hunger, no more thirst, no more scorching heat….God will wipe away every last tear from their eyes." This is the hope of a Christian. Sometimes, as in the case of those early martyrs tortured and executed for their faith, it is the only hope we have: that in the next world things will be different.

We read this passage from Revelation (where it says God will wipe away all tears from their eyes) at funerals, and sometimes on All Saints Day. We think of it whenever we think of "the dead who have died in the Lord," whether they be our immediate ancestors or Christians whose names we cannot know, who suffered and died centuries ago. We read it to remind ourselves that there is another world, where fortunes will be reversed, and where God's people will be victorious and will sing together in joy. This world is not all there is. True Christians, over the years, have been more persecuted than not, more in disfavor than in favor. Yet, we, in America, have come through a long period almost persecution-free. We were raised in a time when being a Christian (which meant, essentially, being "nice") seemed to coincide perfectly with being an American, and therefore it cost us very little. That is changing. As Christian people are understanding their faith better, and seeking to practice it, they are rattling the empire. To be called a member of "the Christian right," today, seems almost to be a curse. To hold high standards, and to advocate those same standards for others, is interpreted as insensitivity and intolerance, and the judgement is coming more and more from official circles. In that regard, we should remember that the Roman Empire was the most tolerant empire ever, and the Romans were proud of it: all religions, they boasted, all gods were welcome, and none judged better than another. It was a mark of their sophistication and civility. Romans were a cosmopolitan people, they understood diversity and accepted it. The struggle with the Christians came, not because Christians introduced a new god, but because they had the temerity to say that all the other gods were garbage. That's what takes you to a cross, then and now.

In the long run the struggle is not between the Christian right and the pagan left. It is between monotheism and polytheism, between one God and many, between those who say Christ is the only way and those who say that such an opinion is not acceptable in polite society. But here is our problem: all of Christianity is based on that singular belief. If we take away salvation by Christ, and Christ alone, everything else comes unraveled. Let's go over it again. We believe that we are sinful, have been since the Garden of Eden and always will be. Left to our own devices, we will dig the hole deeper, even though we might think, at the time, that we are digging ourselves out. We sin both by commission and omission, by what we do and what we don't do. We sin "by thought, word and deed (as the communion service says) against (God's) divine majesty." Unfortunately, the answer is not simply that we should change our behavior. The problem only manifests itself in behavior. We are sick, congenitally and chronically sick. This sickness we call sin, and the prognosis, in every case, is death. We are lost in the moral world, hopelessly lost. Somewhere along the way in seminary they had us read the Hiedelburg Catechism. I was reading along one day, innocently enough, when I came to this question: "What does the Lord require of thee?" Answer (last week's scripture lesson, by the way): "That I should love the Lord my God with all my heart, and all my mind, and all my soul. And that I should love my neighbor as myself." Next question: "Can you do this?" Answer: "No. For by my nature I am prone to hate both God and neighbor." I was stunned, for I had never heard a truer thing said about me. All that college blather about man's essential goodness, which we had accepted and repeated, was a horrible lie. Now I saw what the truth was: that there was no hope for me without Jesus.

Now I knew about myself what Paul said about himself, "The good that I would, I do not; and the evil I would not, that I do. Miserable creature that I am! Who will deliver me from the body of this death? Thanks be to God who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." Contrary to popular wisdom, acknowledging my sinful nature that day in seminary did not destroy my self esteem. For in the same moment that I recognized it, I also recognized Christ's deliverance. In fact, it was a great burden gone. I no longer pretended to perfection. (You know, it takes a lot of energy to pretend, wastes a lot of energy.) I no longer presented myself as one who was good, but as one who (in spite of his nature) had been washed in the blood of the Lamb. It was a much easier road to travel. And I liked myself a lot better. Acknowledging my sin, did not wreck my behavior either -- as some fear that it must. If we say abjectly that we are sinners, they tell us, then we will give up our efforts at being good and our animal natures will take over. I hate to say it, but our animal natures have already taken over -- just read the morning papers. If we admit even the smallest amount of sin into our lives, these people say, we will soon be overwhelmed. So we'll circle the wagons. We'll have our own churches, where only people who think and live and look like us can get in. And we'll have our own special schools, so our perfect children won't be tainted by the sins of those nasty other kids. We will block out of our lives not only other people, who we perceive to be sinners, but we will also block out some of the best literature of our day, and some very fine films and works of art. We'll paint loin cloths on Michaelangelo's figures in the Sistine Chapel. Come on. We are all sinners. Telling the truth about that, and acknowledging our utter dependence upon God, is not the first step to hell, it is the first step to reforming our lives. As long as we pretend, and hide in self-righteousness, we get nowhere. When I know that I used to be a slave, and still would be except for the fact that God came to the slave market and bought my freedom, and then (amazing grace!) did not just set me free, but took me into his own home, adopted me, and made me his child, his heir -- when I see that, am I going to break all my father's rules? Of course not. I no longer need the bonds of slavery (the law) to keep me in line -- I now have my Father's love, a much more powerful force for the good. I'll never be any place close to perfect, but I won't be a monster either. I'll just be a sinner saved by grace. And how will I relate to others? They may condemn me, and even kill me, for letting the cat out of the bag about human nature, but I may, nevertheless, be the one true thing in their lives.

Reading the Gospels, we discover that Jesus was the one true thing in the lives of those around him. He was the light of the world. The Romans were pretending to wield power (but their power was transient and would soon be gone), the Jews were thinking themselves more righteous than everyone else (which, of course, they weren't), even the disciples were deceiving themselves with visions of grandeur (but they would all end up dying like dogs). Jesus told people to lay aside their pride (they had nothing to be so proud about), to love each other not as saints but as sinners, to trust in God's love and care. Some heard his message and ended up in white robes before God's throne. They came through the great tribulation, clinging to the truth of the Gospel: that power is an illusion, and that goodness comes only from God and certainly not from us, and that we are saved, rescued only by the blood of Christ. Some did not hear, and continued as slaves to sin and death. In the movie, "Ben Hur," there is a memorable scene when, in the foreground, Jesus is delivering the Sermon on the Mount, and far in the distance we see the silhouette of Ben Hur, walking the crest of a hill, oblivious. It reminds us that many saw Jesus and didn't believe. Many came close, and walked away. Many were too busy to stop and consider his claims on their lives. As popular as he had been, when he died there was only a handful to carry on his work. If they had gone forth proclaiming how good they were, and moralizing about how everybody else should be good, they would have been "crushed like a grape in the sun." But, instead, they stunned the world by saying how bad they were, and how, nevertheless, they had been saved by God in Jesus Christ. And, although they all died for saying it, the message was never quite forgotten. For it was true. And the truth sets people free. "These are those who have come from the great tribulation, and they've washed their robes, scrubbed them clean in the blood of the Lamb."